Federal regulators on Friday closed the $32 billion IndyMac Bank, the largest regulated thrift ever to fail and the second-largest financial institution shuttered in U.S. history.

The action by the Office of Thrift Supervision was prompted by a $1.3billion run on the bank by worried customers and came five days after the Pasadena-based company said it was exiting the mortgage business and slashing its workforce in half.

“This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis,” OTS Director John Reich said in a statement.

The OTS transferred operation of IndyMac Bank to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which was created in 1933 after a wave of bank failures during the Great Depression.

A successor, IndyMac Federal Bank FSB, will open Monday and will be run by the FDIC, regulators said.

Because the FDIC guarantees checking and savings accounts up to $100,000 per depositor, FDIC Chairwoman Sheila C. Bair called the closure of IndyMac a “non-event” for customers.

“IndyMac-insured deposits are absolutely safe,” she said.

As of March 31, IndyMac had total deposits of $19.06 billion, officials said.

However, about 10,000 depositors have accounts in excess of the insured limit, for a total of $1 billion in potentially uninsured funds, the FDIC said.

Customers with uninsured deposits can make appointments to file a claim with the FDIC beginning on Monday. The federal agency said it would pay unsecured depositors an advance equal to half of the uninsured amount.

Bair said the FDIC will cover all insured deposits – then try to recover its costs by selling IndyMac’s assets.

The goal, she said, is to try to maximize assets and sell the company.

“We’d like to have it sold off in 90 days,” she said.

IndyMac spokesman Evan Wagner said he could not comment because the company is now controlled by the FDIC.

The FDIC said that beginning Monday, IndyMac’s 33 bank branches, including locations in Torrance and Manhattan Beach, will resume normal operating hours and will continue to offer full banking services and be staffed by its regular employees.

But Michael W. Perry, IndyMac’s chairman and chief executive officer, is out of a job.

The new bank will be run by John F. Bovenzi, the FDIC’s chief operating officer.

The run on IndyMac deposits started on June 26, after the release of a letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., expressing concerns about IndyMac’s viability.

IndyMac was trying to arrange a significant capital infusion or find a buyer but the release of the senator’s letter undermined the public confidence and took away the time needed to pursue a recovery, the OTS said.

Regulators determined IndyMac Bank was unlikely to be able to meet continued demands by depositors and is “therefore in an unsafe and unsound condition,” the OTS said in announcing its action.

IndyMac had been in a precarious financial situation that was caused, in part, by an unprecedented stress in the residential real estate market and the sudden evaporation of the secondary mortgage market in August 2007, the OTS said.

Its failure makes IndyMac the

biggest casualty of the mortgage market meltdown.

Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-El Segundo, who is spearheading a package of mortgage reforms in the Legislature, said the bank’s failure was further evidence of the need for more regulation.

In a letter sent to shareholders on Monday, Perry said the company had been working with investment bankers to raise additional capital but had not been successful. He said efforts would continue but “we don’t expect to be able to raise capital until there is more stability and less uncertainty in the housing and mortgage markets,” he wrote.

IndyMac specialized in making and selling so-called Alt-A mortgage loans, a category of loans to consumers more creditworthy than subprime borrowers but typically without the complete documentation of income or assets necessary to receive a prime-rate loan.

IndyMac was formed in 1985 by Countrywide founders Angelo R. Mozilo and David Loeb. It became a standalone concern a decade later.

Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said the federal action was not a surprise.

“Obviously they were concerned about its financial stability,” he said of regulators. “What they did was a very orderly transfer. This protects people who had money deposited in the bank.”

The last FDIC-insured failure in California was the Southern Pacific Bank in Torrance on Feb. 7, 2003.

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